Charlatan, A Memoir
by Maddtown
Summary: Before theirs became an epic love story, he was just a boy falling for the one girl he couldn't have and she was everything he'd forgotten how to be: innocent, vivacious, true. Unfortunately, inevitability sometimes comes at a price. An AU C/B/N Story.
1. Apologia

Full Summary: Before theirs became an epic love story, he was just a boy falling for the one girl he couldn't have and she was everything he'd forgotten how to be: innocent, vivacious, true. From a world of lies, games, and pretending to be anything and everything except who you really are emerges a Chuck Bass no one believed he had in him. No one that is, except for her— Blair Waldorf.

Chuck Bass doesn't do memoirs—but if he did? Well, then, I suppose it would go a little something like this…

Charlatan, a Memoir

**PROLOGUE**

**{Apologia}**

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man –

the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

- Mark Twain

I dedicate this memoir to a one-time friend, for I know of no better apology than the unadulterated truth.

I've never been the kind to try and pass off my personal failings in life as some cruel or unwarranted twist of fate, but I'd be lying if I said there aren't times that I am utterly convinced that the dice was loaded from the start. It seems almost naïve to think that, of all of the turns my life could have taken that year—of the many more unpleasant and shameful directions that it was headed in—it just happened to abruptly change course and take me on a journey that I had never before conceived of.

No, I must say, everything that has happened to me since that year goes so far above the most vivid of my imaginings that I cannot pass it off as mere fluke, as happenstance.

I think back on how easy it would have been to simply drop out of senior year like I had been considering doing for some time then and explore the orient in every lurid way a teenager could have imagined (after all, who was there to stop me and what good was more money than I could count if I couldn't buy myself a few spurts of happiness in between the lonely stretches?).

I've also considered the very real (if frightening), possibility that, in my effort to find any and all viable means of escaping my harsh reality, I might finally have one day snorted a little more coke than my blood vessels could accommodate and ended up bleeding out through my ears in the second floor boy's room at St. Jude's.

I even get to thinking about all of the times when I was too drunk to remember my own name but was just as insistent on betting everything I had on a poker match. And, every so often, I think about Jenny Humphrey—pretty, little, toxic Jenny Humphrey—and it blows my mind that I somehow managed to bypass every single one of these catastrophes to end up where I am today.

Some—perhaps you—might call my escape from these undoubtedly tragic outcomes an outright miracle, or else, an act of sorcery and, quite frankly, you won't hear any arguments from me. I don't know how I suddenly got so lucky either…I am only grateful that I did.

Now, please, hear me out, because I can practically see your fingers moving to close the pages of this journal. (Yes, my friend, I feel that I still know you well, in spite of everything that has happened between us).

You see, in spite of my conviction in a higher plan—in a little something called destiny—I don't want you to misconstrue my reasons for writing this piece.

I do not intend to take this trip down memory lane to absolve myself of responsibility or to pass off the niggling guilt that I have lived with for ten years now on capricious notions like fate and miracles and reversals of fortune. I would not be so crass as to suggest that I am anything but morally reprehensible for knowingly taking what did not belong to me or hurting the people that I hurt. I'm just saying that some things in life cannot be helped…and that, sometimes, there are things we are not expecting to happen to us that prove to be, nonetheless, _right_.

Look, I know what you are thinking, (what you have probably always thought)…that perhaps if I had been a little more honorable and less selfish and she had been a little less beautiful and more reticent, or—I don't know—if she had been a little more unaffected and less impressionable and I had been a little more brotherly and less in love with her, then…well, then everything would have wound up differently. But you and I both know that I was none of those things and she was all of those things and that it's quite likely that someday, somehow, we would have all found ourselves in exactly the same position as we did all of those years ago. It's the law of inevitability, my friend…it will always bring us full circle.

I never took it for granted that things would stay forever as they were the year that I turned seventeen, but, if I'm to be completely honest, there were a few things in my life that I had naïvely counted on to hold fast against the tides of time. In my conviction in the monotony of life, with the assurance of its slow-spinning tomorrows, I guess I had come to believe that some things could actually stay unchanged forever…my friendship with Nathanial Archibald was at the top of my list.

When we were kids, Nathanial and I stood against life's barrage of catastrophes with unquestioning togetherness, a silent pact forged between us to wear our indifference like armor, an oath of loyalty sworn into decanters of alcohol and written into the folds of a joint.

Water used to run just a little bit thicker than blood through our veins, we used to say.

We were fast friends by high school…like brothers in no time. Masculine bonds were forged by a taste for escapism and decadence and sealed with our burgeoning daddy issues. We shared little and, yet, probably shared everything we had. We said little, but we understood each other perfectly.

We were also as different as night and day in most respects—he the prince and me the rogue; he the star of the lacrosse team and me, the self-proclaimed outcast—but it was in a silent creed of clandestine rivalry, long silences and delinquency, camaraderie and shared secrets that we found our balance, our merging points.

I've been accused of selfishness more times in my life than I can count—and I can hardly deny the charge in good conscience—but there was little that I was not willing to do for Nathanial in those days of bona fide brotherhood.

It even went so far as to become an unspoken rule that if ever one of us took home the trophy at the all-star game or, say, the home-coming queen, the other would immediately, by rule of friendship and law of manhood, deconstruct himself into his most unappealing qualities in an automatic show of support and disclaim, of envy and self-sacrifice.

(That, after a while, Nathanial's star was shining so brightly that the burden of appearing 'less-than' fell squarely on my shoulders, I think, escaped both of our notice.

By then, I had become quite accustomed to falling short really.)

Nathanial was a quiet kid in those days, reserved in a way that contradicted his poster-boy looks and effortless popularity, and almost a shell of a boy when I met him. He was moving through all of the actions of being star-athlete and the guy everyone wanted to sit beside in class—joking, laughing, winning—but without any substance or conscious acknowledgement that suggested he did the things that he did because he wanted to.

Not that he was some kind of wilting flower or anything of that sort. No, even at the worst of times that boy shone like he was made of glitter and gold; but he was locked in a choke-hold of over-achievement that I could know nothing about and it was plain to see that it was taking its toll on him, wearing him down until he felt foreign in his own skin and every success felt like another bar across the proverbial cage.

His was a life of complex duality, I suppose you could say; a contest between who he was and who he had to be.

Me on the other hand—well, I was always a little worse off than any of that.

I had no mother. I had a father who only cared for me with his checkbook, and I had never been provided a foundation over which to build my self-respect. There was no handsome, celebrated frame to contain the hollowness spreading inside of me…I wasn't lost and lonely, looking for freedom or fighting for air like Nathanial was. I was _damaged_…rotting on the inside before I'd even reached my teens.

Mine, you see, has always been a life of indefinable guilt.

It was, after all, my violent intrusion into this world that had sent my father into a tailspin of alcoholism and disillusionment and my mother to an early grave. It was my failures and misdemeanors that kept Father drinking, the drinking that dampened his reflexes, and the dampened reflexes that made him plow into the side of an eighteen wheeler one fateful, winter day.

It was a domino effect of disaster, really, with me standing stupidly at the start.

I never have truly gotten over that if I'm to be completely honest. Even after all of the therapy sessions and finding a pretty-haired, pouty-lipped saving grace to kiss my unseen wounds, being the catalyst for so much devastation still weighs heavily on my heart.

I can't say that the old man was ever deliberately cruel to me in the years following my mother's death, either, even if the mere impression of him leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and a coldness that seeps into my bones. He didn't really have to be. It was everything about the way he looked at me on those rare occasions he was actually near enough to put me in his line of vision—as if I was some sort of marauder lying in wait, ready to strike at the first show of weakness. It was the forced way that he said "son," as if the word was sticking in his throat and choking him that confirmed my worst fears and building sense of shame.

I was responsible for the death of my mother and my father hated me for it.

There simply was no other explanation in my youthful perception for the absence of affection in his dealings with me; in the way he foisted me off on one au pair after another from the time that I was born as if he wanted nothing to do with me, or the way he locked himself inside of his office with a bottle of scotch when I surprised him with a hug or a tantrum and he would be forced to look into my eyes (my mother's eyes) and actually see me: needy, dejected, proof that one can never be truly free of one's past.

I would have killed to have been in Nathanial's shoes in those early years when we were struggling to find our places in the world—no matter how hard he tried to dissuade me from it and no matter how badly he wished to escape it himself. I wanted to feel for just a moment like my life was purposeful and profound…like it meant something to someone what I did with it.

I guess you could say that the grass wasn't only a beautiful, lustrous green on Nathanial's side from my vantage point…it was made of gold.

That was, perhaps, where the first spark of rivalry struck between us, though it certainly wasn't the last.

What a dreary pair I sometimes think the two of us must have made with all of our emotional deficiencies, identity crises, and futile rebellions…

We were always so determined to fight against the lonely days and the scorching heat of the spotlight with our own brand of dissolution that we didn't see how self-destructive we were becoming.

Oh, I got to be especially good at it.

We took the Upper East Side by storm in those early years though; walking around with our invisible force field of wealth and stature for protection, thinking we had it all figured out…imagining ourselves somehow invincible now that we had formed an impenetrable alliance against everything that threatened to box us in or tame our rebel-without-a-cause dispositions.

We fought everything back-against-back, us against the world, thinking we could stave off any enemy who dared oppress us; figuring that, together, we could do anything.

It never occurred to us that one day we would have to fight each other.

I've personally always considered it life's greatest shame, an injustice of the first degree, that the line between love and hate should be so disconcertingly thin, so fragile and fluid.

It seems the strangest thing to be able to look up to a person—to admire them and love them and wish them all of the best that the world has to offer—and yet resent them what they so easily possess and you have want of.

It seems petty and, at times, cruel that I should have so greatly valued the companionship of Nathanial Archibald and still hated living in his shadow, cast time and time again into darkness by the light of his glory.

There was, even then, something foreign and tactless in standing against him, (he who was the closest I ever came to having family), though we both understood that there was no way to win save at each other's expense…

After all, there was but one Blair Waldorf.

It's been ten years since I last saw Nathanial Archibald. Ten years since I last called him 'friend.' A decade has passed during which I have wondered constantly where he might be, what he might be doing, and whether he's considered this trifling dissonance between love and hate as deeply as I have.

Since that last time that I saw him in the lobby of the Empire, standing just steps above me but a world apart, his eyes burning blue and ominous and hatred etched into every line of his mouth—ever since he leaned in, looked me dead in the eyes and said he wished he'd just let me go down with the Vanderbilt yacht—I have spent nearly every day thinking about how things between us could have ended so badly. How we could be completely different people playing a completely different game before we'd even realized the rules had changed.

I think I've deliberated ad nauseam on how to set things right…

Lately, I've gotten to wondering if the solution isn't lurking somewhere beneath the surface of the very problem, waiting to be unearthed in its re-telling, waiting for wiser eyes and a mature mind to revisit it and set it free. Perhaps redemption is no farther than these very words.

There is, really, only one way to know…

But, I am getting ahead of myself now, I think. What I set out to do here was to tell you my story and I seem to have left out the most important part.

You see, none of what I am about to tell you would hold any significance at all if I were to leave out the one other person who helped shape me into the man I am today. The one who stepped into my shattered world and made me question everything about myself that I had once held true.

Though I would rather have died than have admitted it to her then, she made things better; dark seemed lighter when she was around and she made me forget how fucked-up the world could be, because in her bubble, under her wing, it was safe.

Her name was Blair Waldorf and, before either of us knew how it had even happened, she was everything to me.

But things hadn't always been that way…

For instance, she was very much Nathanial's trusty girlfriend by the time we were fifteen and for that reason and, because she reviled the very sight of me, we avoided each other like the plague even while we were constantly cruising the same social sphere.

Now, what more I could simply tell you about Blair that could possibly do her justice—that could paint a picture in your mind of the girl who blew me away every day that I knew her, I honestly do not know.

She was an enigma to put it quite simply.

I mean, the girl was a firecracker if ever I did see one—feisty, sharp-tongued and with an apparent mean-streak that could only rival my own—but she was every bit as different from me as she was the same.

She was better. She faced the bullshit the rest of us were hiding from and she fought it, tooth and nail and all six inches of her stiletto heels.

She was a fighter that way, but she was innocent too—good where it counted, vulnerable around the people that mattered and she was so far out of my league that I don't know how it even came to be that we spoke one word to each other during our entire high school careers.

No…

That isn't exactly true. I know precisely who it was that brought us together though I wish it had happened some other way.

I wish it had been simple and easy and perfectly honorable.

I have many regrets, so many "what ifs" and "if onlys." Nearly all of them have to do with what happened eleven years ago during that fateful year Serena Van der Woodsen bought a one-way ticket to repentance and the rest of us—me, Nathanial, and of course Blair—opened our eyes to a world we didn't recognize…to a world we'd long avoided—to the real world.

That was the year we finally understood—_really_ understood—the meaning behind the words 'love' and 'betrayal.' We were just seventeen.

I am not saying that I would change anything even if I could, even if it were to somehow magically make everything okay. All I am saying is…

I am sorry.

The last thing I wanted—then, now, ever—was for the people that I loved to get hurt or to lay ruin to yet another treasured facet of my life.

Sadly, what one wants and what one gets have always been two intrinsically different things.

Believe me, _I_ would know…

I'm Chuck Bass.

A/N: Thoughts? Love it, hate it, want me to continue? Please let me know.


	2. Nostalgia

Many thanks to Catrinelle for being so wonderfully her and to all of the lovely reviewers who shared their thoughts with me.

**Charlatan, A Memoir**

_Chapter One_

{Nostalgia}

"_Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, _

_the things you are, the things you never want to lose."_

_- __**Kevin Arnold**_

My first and most vivid impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable, hot afternoon on Walton Beach during the last of those carefree summer days when monotony was our biggest consolation and the world revolved around three unshakable things: sex, tequila, and ourselves.

It was on one such uninhibited day of calm that I found myself once again on the outskirts of the crowd, too burdened by the weight of the world to be anything but anti-social, and Nathanial Archibald showed his penchant for taking the wrong turn at precisely the wrong moment. It was on this same day that Serena Van der Woodsen chose to reinforce it into our eager, adolescent minds that she was indeed the life of the party, and it was also the day that I first recognized that Blair Waldorf—composed, clever-minded, frigid little Blair Waldorf—was the glue that held the four of us together.

This was the day I first recognized, though not ungrudgingly, my longing for companionship...for that unspeakable something that could never belong to me.

It was a humid day. The air was stifling and stagnant. Nathanial and I were part of a group of our schoolmates, (specifically, those of us whose parents could claim a beach-front property in the Hamptons on their list of taxable assets), that had come swarming to a little strip of private beach behind the Coates Estate, looking for relief that wasn't exclusive to the outdoor heat.

It's always been something of a marvel to me how quickly the laws of our conservative jungle changed whenever we found ourselves off of our home turfs, away from the watchful gaze of overbearing parents, and in the one place where it was socially acceptable to wear next to nothing…

I suppose there's something about all of that sand and open air that so excites the juvenile libido. Maybe it's just the return to man's primal landscape that does it—I can't really say. It's never been my cup of tea.

Truth be told, I'd felt the air cementing in my lungs the moment I'd stepped beyond the gated-lawn of Isabel's summer home and taken a good, long look at the clear and crisp water.

Miles and miles of freedom stretched from one end of the beach to the other, but the very vastness of the scenery troubled me. I felt certain that I could be swallowed up at any moment by the infinite nothingness of it all; never to be seen, never heard of, or thought of again.

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind a woman's scream ricocheted off the casing of my skull, but the sound was sucked back into the black hole of my subconscious before it'd had a chance to fully register.

"Hey man, are you okay?" Nathanial's voice came as a welcome interruption.

"Couldn't be better," I lied.

"Really," he pressed, "'cause you look like you've just walked in on your father's funeral." _Leave it to Nathanial to make the most cliché analogies with as much disregard for tact as timing._

"Glowing with happiness, am I?" I drawled sarcastically, my mood far from amiable.

Nathanial frowned. "You don't mean that."

"What if I do?"

His eyes turned pensive. "I'd say you have your reasons for saying it, but you don't mean it."

"How is it that I keep forgetting about all of that special insight you have into the human psyche and keep blowing my money on shrinks, Nathanial?" I mocked. He shrugged good-naturedly and my voice lost its edge, "Alright, fine. For the record, I don't want the old man dead...that's more his scene than mine."

"C'mon man. You're way off base with that. I'm sure of it," Nathanial placated me in that earnest way of his; the way that he always did when he thought I was slipping into another one of my self-deprecating moods. "Bart doesn't hate you. He's just self-absorbed and closed-off and—and just incredibly selfish. To be honest, he's probably not all that different from every other parent on the Upper East Side..."

"What, are they _all_ shit at it?" I mumbled bitterly.

"My friend, you're looking at the proud progeny of the shittiest in the city." He concurred with a dramatic wave at the crowd ahead of us.

I let my eyes survey the crowd scattered along the beach. Nearly every other kid out there that day looked like he was having the time of his life, as weightless on the shore as he was in the water.

"Well, that makes me feel loads better, Nathanial, thank you." I returned sarcastically, tipping my head at him in mock gratitude. "Really puts things into perspective, you know. In fact, the next time I start thinking that my existence is completely and utterly meaningless, I'll just remember that, somewhere out there, so is someone else's." I couldn't help the bitterness in my tone, "That's bound to put the cheer right back into me."

Nathanial sighed. "C'mon, Chuck…that's not—I didn't…" His dug his hands into the pockets of his shorts, at a loss for the words to fix it—to fix me.

I blew out the air in my lungs, knowing that it was unfair of me to put this on him or to expect him to understand what he couldn't possibly know anything about. By way of apology I offered, "He's back, you know…in town."

"He is? I didn't know." Nathanial had learned to be weary when the topic of my father came up and he sounded hesitant now. He knew as well as I did that it could never lead to someplace good.

"Neither did I," I confirmed what he must have been suspecting. "I saw him in the lobby at the Palace as I was leaving."

"Oh?" He asked neutrally, "What did he say to you?"

I deepened my voice a pitch and imitated a stern nod, "Charles."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"I'm sorry, man." He was. I knew that much. It made me feel slightly better thinking that there was still one person out there on my side, one person who wished better for me.

I shrugged like I always did when the conversation got to be too heavy, "What for? I probably wouldn't know what to say to him if he was interested in throwing more than two words in my direction. I hardly know the man." He'd made sure of that.

"It's his loss, Chuck." Nathanial was emphatic and I felt the tension dissipate a little more from my body.

"Mmmm." I closed the subject with a single non-committal nod, running out of steam in my bid to kick my own ass.

Nathanial graciously allowed it, probably weary of my prickly mood. "Say, what do you say we go catch some rays?"

I looked wryly at where my cut-off t-shirt and designer shorts had placed my pale limbs on display. "Oh, I don't know. I'm growing rather fond of my pasty complexion." I'd never been attracted to sunlight the way my bronzed friend seemed to be, "I think the ladies are even starting to go for it."

"The ladies will go for anything 'Chuck Bass' these days, the way I hear." He grinned approvingly.

"As always, my reputation is grossly legitimate." I smirked, pleased and displeased with that reality in the same moment.

With a feeling of detachment and an impression that I had reached a point beyond the high cultured, planned-parented understanding of my peers, I found myself a seat atop an abandoned life-guarding post. It was a secluded place that would take me away from the crowd, allowing me to quietly observe and amuse myself with the joys and misadventures of others without any of the awkwardness of having to join in.

Nathanial set up camp, laying out his towel and swimming gear beneath my chosen spot and Blair and Serena eventually found their way over to us.

"So nice of you to let Nathanial out for a play-date, Blair," I took my opportunity to ruffle the brunette's feathers. It was turning into something of a past-time of mine, inciting Blair Waldorf. There was an element of danger—a sort of sadistic thrill—attached to doing it…much like poking at a bee-hive. "I see you're here to also supervise this time."

"Maybe if you could be trusted to return him in the same condition that you got him, I'd have fewer objections to your 'play-dates.'" Blair pursed her lips without looking at me. That was her version of payback for my digs, I supposed, pretending that it was beneath her to acknowledge my existence.

"Have you met Nathanial?" I scoffed, "He hardly needs my encouragement."

Nathanial gave my leg a friendly punch before sitting down on the heated sand. Blair smoothed back wisps of her long hair and fixed the straps of her designer one-piece, red swimsuit. She never stopped watching the waves hitting the shore. It seemed the five seconds of her attention that had been allotted to me had already expired and I felt an unexpected prickle of irritation at her prissiness. "You know, it might do you some good to let your own hair down once in a while, Princess...maybe at my next event you can start us off with some limbo dancing. That is, if you'll let us borrow the stick that's lodged up your—"

A thousand little, angry bees broke free of their nest, their stingers sharp and aiming for me. "I'd rather rot in hell than come to one of your _pathetic_ parties!" Blair finally met my eyes with a look that was meant to freeze molten metal.

I smirked back at her as if to challenge her conviction. I couldn't tell what gave me more satisfaction: knowing that I had shaken her composure or that she was finally looking at me, irrefutably aware of my presence.

I swallowed the rest of my irritation along with my sentence, feeling like I had won this round, but wondering what game it was that I was even playing or why I was playing it with Blair Waldorf of all people.

My gratification slipped away with the questions. I shifted a little uneasily in my seat.

"Who wants a drink?" Nathanial quickly diverted, diffusing the tension that usually oppressed the air when Blair and I shared it, pulling out a bottle he'd brought with him from the house.

Without hesitation, Serena leaned over Blair and took the bottle from Nathanial's hands.

A shadow of a frown flickered across Blair's forehead as she watched her friend, but she remained silent.

I looked between the two friends, doubting that even Blair Waldorf knew how to stop a train-wreck.

For some time, Nathanial and Blair simply sunbathed, each on their respective towels, Blair's beach bag resting between the two of them like some kind of chastity marker. (It made me laugh to see it and, briefly, I wondered what it would be like to know a girl so well that you might love her before you'd ever fucked her. The idea was too foreign, too ludicrous for me to consider for too long, though. Nathanial had the math all wrong as usual. Everyone knew sex came before love in the equation. That's if the latter came at all…)

Turning away from the virginal duo, I sat sullenly observing the joys around me, drowning out the faint echoes of that disconnected scream reverberating through my head, while Serena…

Well, Serena just drank.

Serena always drank. She did it because that's what she did best, but also because, according to her, drinking made her feel like there were diamonds on her insides, lighting her up (cutting her deep). In a classic rich girl's homage to the adage "diamonds are a girl's best friend," Serena even insisted on securing the tiny gems into her lustrous locks of blonde hair with bobby-pins.

As if she needed to attract any more attention to herself when all she had covering her ample breasts and shapely backside was a strip of white spandex.

But that was Serena Van der Woodson for you…always trying to blind you with her Barbie-doll splendour in the hopes that you forgot to look past it and catch a glimpse of the real her.

It was at the center of our small scrap of pretend-paradise that Serena stood some unknown hour later, like a golden goddess with false diamonds fastened to her hair and legs that could lead a man to heaven naked to the hungry eyes of every boy in our year.

From the house, music floated down in soft gales which Serena swayed in perfect time to, moving her hips fluidly and twirling on her toes in elegant pirouettes. She was a vision of drunken grace, glittering in the sun like a sparkling ballerina and lending smiles and bubbles of laughter to the balmy air.

As sensual and provocative as any teenage girl dreamed of being, there was only a hint of clumsiness to her steps and the occasional unattractive hiccup to betray her dwindling senses. All the while, she concerned herself with no one else except to make sure that we watched—minding us only long enough to ensure that she was never there alone.

(I used to think she fed on our attention to validate herself—to confirm the awe she struck in us with her blatant sexuality, her beauty, and her dancing—but, when I think back on it now, I imagine Serena might have simply been terrified that she would look up one of those times that she danced for us to find that we had all vanished—that we had abandoned her the way her mother had time and time again.

She always seemed so uncertain of what would become of her if she was left on her own.

We were all uncertain, truth be told.)

As was her style, Serena had forgone the more feminine tradition of sipping her liquor from a glass and held tightly to a bottle of tequila with her right hand. The alcohol had pushed a red flush into her cheeks that served only to make her more mind-bogglingly beautiful in her drunkenness. She looked every bit as if she was put on this earth to drink and make merry and tempt every boy in sight into falling hopelessly in love with her.

You could see how pleased she was to be out there dancing for everyone too; to have nearly every eye following her languid movements, to be beautiful and bright, desired and young in one single satisfying moment.

It was all so terribly showy, so typically her, that I felt a small wave of disgust wash over me. I hated actresses and Serena was always too insistent on putting on a show.

I found her exhibitionism almost tragic. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing another face to the same kind of problem—my own problem.

The difference was that I wanted the world to forget about me, to leave me the fuck alone to wallow in my self-pity and lay waste to what little was left of my self-respect…but Serena? No, Serena chased after it pitifully in the hopes that she could change its mind—hoping she could dance the world into loving her.

"Blair!" Serena suddenly called out mid-twirl, losing her balance just a bit and laughing as she stumbled in the sand. "Blair…" She breathed and we all watched—because it's always been a widely accepted human weakness to be captivated by broken goddesses and their public sorrows—as Serena danced to where the darker-haired girl was sitting quietly on her beach towel, a frown on her delicate face and Nathanial by her side. "Dance with me, Blair," Serena called out to her, making Barbie-toes in the sand.

Blair seemed to shrink back ever so slightly at the invitation and I wondered—not for the first time—what it must be like for her to be best friends with the Golden Girl of the U.E.S, to be everything Serena was not and nothing like what Serena was.

To me it seemed that Blair danced away from the spotlight just as often as Serena danced into it. It was a wonder they ever came together at all.

I wondered briefly if Blair ever wished to turn in her regal crown for a moment like this one. To dance on the beach for a crowd of admiring eyes and know that they all wanted her, or wanted to be like her, or couldn't help but be mesmerized by her charm. Somehow, I didn't think Blair was above that kind of meaningless thrill, structured and composed as she was.

There was a little bit of the attention-starved child in all of us, I was inclined to think.

Then again, there had always been something different about Blair that I'd never quite been able to put my finger on, some _je ne c'est quoi_ quality that escaped analysis.

Perhaps it was the world-weary look that she sometimes carried in her eyes that had me wondering if she didn't think it her burden in life to carry the troubles of her most beloved as her own—to put everything and everyone before herself.

I couldn't imagine the effort it must take to be everybody else's life raft...at seventeen, everyone I knew, myself included, was having trouble just holding their own heads above water.

Quite grudgingly, I allowed myself a moment to admire Blair's understated strength and her stanch resolve to keep her hands clean, even if I did still resent her hold over Nathanial from time to time.

"No, Serena," Blair drew away from Serena's seeking arms, her voice quiet but firm. "Maybe we should go for a walk, instead. We can clear our heads." she reached for the bottle in Serena's hands, but the taller girl held fast.

"Blair," Serena pouted prettily. "You have to dance with me! Please, Blair, please. Look at how much fun it is." And she spun around unsteadily, hugging her arms to herself and splashing alcohol onto her nearly-bare and abundant chest.

She giggled, unsteady on her feet, and Nathanial laughed softly with her, infected by the sound. "Whoa. Steady there, girl." He said, holding out an arm as if to guide the air around him into keeping Serena upright.

Nathanial, I think, was always the most fascinated by Serena's displays. I got the feeling he sometimes wished he could let loose the way the other blonde never hesitated to. Sometimes, I thought there was a look in his eyes as he watched Serena drinking and dancing like he had found the living, breathing definition of freedom.

"Nate, make her dance with me. Make her dance, Nate," Serena implored him, but he just smiled back at her in a sweet, placating way. No one could make Blair Waldorf do anything she didn't want to do, not even Serena Van der Woodson. Certainly not Nathanial.

Blair stood then and we all held our breaths. Had Serena's sunny vitality finally melted the queen's ice?

I shifted in my seat, my senses alive and anticipating something I couldn't put a name to.

Serena squealed in delight and threw herself at the smaller girl, but Blair had the advantage of sobriety to keep her from toppling over and she managed to steady Serena with an arm underneath the taller girl's. Serena took another swig from the bottle in her hand and offered it to Blair like a child who had been recently reminded that it was only polite to share. Blair gently took the bottle from her hand and passed it to Nate without comment.

She pushed Serena's golden locks out of her face, tucking the strands behind her ears so she could look into Serena's blood-shot eyes. "Are you okay, S?" She spoke as if to a small child—to a precious, intoxicated little six year-old.

"Blair, I'm marvelous. Oh, Blair, I—I'm so happy right now, I feel like I can fly," Serena laughed, stretching out the word 'fly' as if she could sail away with the sound alone.

Around us, the crowd was slowly disassembling, understanding that the show was coming to an end and quickly losing interest. A few of them grumbled "buzz kill" as Blair covered Serena with her discarded sarong, but she seemed not to hear them.

I watched, perhaps more mesmerized now than I had been by Serena's sorrowful dancing.

So many times had I been shit-faced myself, stumbling around drunk and stupid, and not once had I had someone like Blair Waldorf to ask me if things were okay or to wonder if there wasn't a bigger reason for self-destructing than wanting to be free or to fly away.

I wondered what might have happened if—just once—someone had been there with me at rock bottom like Blair was here now with Serena, gentle fingers cradling _my_ face and searching for answers I couldn't voice inside _my_ haunted eyes.

It was just another one of life's little cruelties, I supposed, that I would never know.

"Do you want to go inside and talk for a little bit?" Blair tried again.

Serena seemed suddenly put out by the suggestion. "I—I just want to dance! Can't we dance, Blair? Why won't you just dance with me this once?" The words took a sharp edge to them. Serena's blue eyes seemed suddenly glassy—desperate. Blair considered her friend for a long moment, her eyes shiny, sad, and tender.

It occurred to me watching the two of them that Serena might have pinned diamonds into her hair that day but Blair Waldorf wore them in her eyes.

"I—Let me take her in—" Nathanial started softly, gently.

"No!" Serena cut him off sharply. We were all startled by her vehemence.

Blair was there to sooth her. "Come inside with me and just lie down for a few minutes, okay, S? Come rest that pretty head of yours," she said with a smile and slight roll of the eyes, as if she knew the only way to sooth Serena's unseen suffering was through compliment, "and then we can dance all you like, alright?"

"Do you promise?"

"Cross my heart."

This seemed to placate the drunken girl. She placed her golden head against Blair's small shoulder, strands of her blonde hair mixing with Blair's brown, entwining the two of them together into one picture-perfect vision of girlish beauty.

Serena closed her eyes, looking tired—tired of dancing, of wanting to fly, of alcohol, of the world in general…it was hard to say which one it was, if she was not them all.

"I love you, Blair. You're so good to me. I really love you, you know that?" Serena said, the laughter gone out of her and a solemnity taking its place. "Blair, I'm sorry. You know how sorry I am right?"

"Shhh, Serena." Blair cooed, her voice like warm honey. "Of course, I know it."

"Because we're bes—besties, right B?"

"We're sisters, S."

Serena sighed, limbs growing more and more jelly-like, "Don't ever leave me."

"Never."

"Promise me? Y—You have to promise. No matter w—what happens! You have to _mean_ it, Blair."

"Okay, okay. I promise, S. I promise. I'm right here. Always, okay?"

A beat of silence. "Okay."

"Come on, Sweetheart. Let's go."

I watched Blair as she walked Serena tenderly towards the looming house atop the hill. The tranquility of the scene moved something I'd thought long dead inside of me. I felt a distressing skip in some unrecognizable place within my breast-bone. I felt a thump, thump, thump against my rib-cage that I'd never been conscious of before.

It was an alarming sensation, this sudden awareness of my own humanity. I didn't think I liked it all that much either. There had been solace to be found in the numbness.

Laughter glided through the air all around me, shouts and squeals pierced through the oppressive heat while a feeling of profound isolation washed over me as I sat atop my life-guarding tower, watching Blair leading Serena slowly, slowly, slowly away from my friendless throne.

"What the hell are you still doing up there?" Nathanial shouted out to me from amidst the ocean waves, wading through frothy water to close the distance between himself and my elevated post, and I swiveled sharply in my chair. I hadn't even realized he'd left my side, so intent was I on watching Blair and Serena disappearing into the nearby distance, (so caught up was I on my longing for a moment as affecting as the one I had just watched transpire between the two girls fate had lately caught up in my social orbit).

"I'm _being_, Nathanial," I shouted back irritably. _What did it look like I was doing?_

He rolled his eyes, "A noble endeavour, Deepak, but you can do that just as well down here. Come on, man, get out here."

"I'm fine." I assured him with a dismissing wave of my hand. "In fact, I'm deliriously happy right where I am, thank you." I slipped my sunglasses back over my eyes in order to avoid Nathanial's piercing stare.

There were times I worried that he could see right through my false assurances and flippant waves. Sometimes, I felt certain he could see it in my eyes that my heart wasn't in it, that my heart was never in it. I didn't have the patience for his scrutiny today.

"Save the phony assurances for your shrink, Bass. Just get out here already. The water's great!" Nathanial coaxed me good-naturedly.

All sunshine, he was—just like Serena.

I shook my head, my spirits somewhere in the depths of my toes and slipping lower, lower...slipping away. "Archibald, you know no one is a more avid supporter of communal bathing than I am, but the thought of accidentally swallowing "Whiz kid" Wilson's piss-water turns my stomach, not my crank." Nate turned curiously to where the Wilson kid stood by himself, waist-high in water, a short distance away, looking intensely out at some unknown point in the distance, his glasses fogged up entirely so that there was no way he could actually see through them. I watched Nate's eyebrows rise slightly before he turned back to me.

"It's the ocean, Chuck, not a swimming pool." He challenged.

"Still not worth the risk." I insisted.

"Don't tell me you came to a beach party to sit in a chair all day?" His voice was filled with incredulity.

"Look, I'd just rather conserve my energies for more promising activities." I tried a different tactic.

He called my bluff. "Really? Like what?"

"Like a date with the girl of my dreams." I answered languidly, adjusting my sunglasses back over my face and leaning back as if to doze right then and there.

I wished he didn't take it upon himself to pull me out of my dark places at every turn. Sometimes, I wanted to drown in the abyss. Sometimes, the darkness soothed me.

"You mean the girl _in_ your dreams?"

"What's the difference?" I asked by way of distracting him rather than by any desire to learn his answer.

He took my bait, "Oh, I dunno, only that one's not real…"

"Ah, my friend, you are sadly misinformed. Neither is real; but, while the first may be a commercial lie sold by chocolate companies and Hallmark, the second—oh, well now, she can be as real as my right hand." I waved the spoken member in the air, wriggling my fingers for added vulgarity. A calculated smirk made its way onto my face.

Nathanial gave me an aggravated look. "Fine, man. Whatever. Suit yourself."

"I always do," I reminded him.

With a final offending hand gesture, Nathanial glided back into the crystalline water.

Even with all of their weightiness, those were the simplest of our days. Days troubled by problems for which we had already mastered all the best avoidance tactics and supported by relationships we'd spent years cultivating into a pleasant form of tolerance. Things were generally easy if not all that pleasant.

Life was more or less carefree and just as we had left it the day before, and the day before that one, and the day even before that. It fed our certainty that the world was a dreadfully banal thing—frozen in space the way that it was, never changing, never ending, never spinning in the wrong direction. The world was ever waiting for us to figure out the best way to get out there and make it our own.

Back then, we had eyes only for eternity.

It was all a part of being unquestioningly idyllic, I suppose…of being young and stupid.

We stared out at that horizon line and refused to acknowledge the storm clouds closing in on our calm day. We willed them to stay at bay.

They came anyway…


	3. Awareness

A/N: So it turns out that making promises to update "in a few days" when you're a full-time student is never a wise choice; especially if you do it _before_ consulting your day-planner full of assignment deadlines. You will be made a liar of. Trust me on this.

I do sincerely apologize for leaving my lovely readers/reviewers hanging for so long. I know how frustrating that is and if I could help it, believe me, I would. I hate homework and it hates me, but alas, I figure since I pay some people thousands of dollars for the privilege to do it, I'd better suck it up and make sure it's respectable.

As it stands, I have not had a chance to even look over this half-finished chapter that I had hoped to post ages ago and my holidays seem to be an ever-distant dream…so, rather than sit on what I have already written for God-only-knows-how-much-longer, I'm just going to post the portion that can stand on its own and hope to have the rest finished soon enough. I'm disappointed to have to do it this way, but c'est la vie. I hope I don't disappoint everyone else as well along with me, though.

Oh and I can't thank the reviewers who have offered me their encouragement and support so far enough! You guys are seriously amazing. ;)

**Charlatan: A Memoir**

_Chapter Two_

{Awareness}

_Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. _

_- __**Oscar Wilde**_

Blair returned from the house a short while later, a breezy white summer dress now hugging her slim figure. I was still sitting in my chair, my eyes closed (as I drowned myself in misery instead of water). She was short of breath and, surprisingly, sans our resident Goddess-of-the-liquor-cabinet.

"Nate!" She called out anxiously and I turned quickly in my chair at her tone.

"What's going on?" I asked. She looked out after Nathanial for another moment and I thought maybe our resolve to avoid each other at all costs had evolved into the kind of outright mutiny that involved ignoring one another when spoken to and similarly juvenile things when finally she turned to me, her chocolate eyes imploring.

"It's Serena. I put her down in a spare bedroom and went into the bathroom to soak a towel—I was only gone maybe a minute, but when I got back she was gone." She breathed laboriously, "I—I can't find her anywhere, Chuck. I think she's wandered off." Some of her obvious alarm seeped into me. There were a lot of places to go in a landscape like this one, a lot of sharp edges to fall against, so many high ledges to fall off of…

"Hey, Nathanial!" I called out towards the water, my voice far greater in volume than Blair's tiny one had been and I saw him lift his blonde head from the distant waves and look at me and Blair.

I turned back to Blair when I saw him finally heading in our direction and climbed down the rusted iron rungs below my chair.

"We'll all look for her. Don't worry, Blair. We'll find her." Maybe it was watching the maternal way that Blair had dealt with Serena that moved me to do it, or maybe it was the regret that I had felt in realizing I'd missed out on something this girl before me somehow embodied, but I felt an irrepressible desire to comfort her—to help Blair carry one of her life-rafts for once. "She can't have gotten far."

We both knew it was a blatant lie but she didn't call me on it and I didn't confess.

Blair turned her anxious eyes towards me once again and whispered fearfully, "She's not herself right now—she's going through a lot." _She's drunk out of her mind—she could get herself killed_, I read between the lines. I could see it in her eyes that she knew I had. She looked almost relieved not to have to say more.

Nate joined us a moment later and pulled Blair in for a quick, consolatory hug after she'd filled him in. I wondered, instinctively, whether it's what I should have done in that first moment when Blair had appeared distraught before me.

Reality immediately set my judgment straight. She was Nathanial's to comfort; of course I needn't worry about her feelings. Besides, this was Blair we were talking about; she'd probably have ripped my arms clean out of their sockets if I had tried to touch her.

It was a sobering thought. I felt a little empty.

Nate led the way towards the tree line and Blair had to run to keep up with his long-legged stride. She fell behind in a matter of minutes.

I fell back into step with her, feeling again that faint compulsion to ease some of her distress. My eyes found Nate's receding form disappearing along a pathway through the trees up ahead. I wondered whether I should call out to him. I stayed quiet instead.

Soon, I was alone with Blair.

Silence stretched between us until I started to feel uncharacteristically uncomfortable with it. I was a man of choice words by nature, and I mostly preferred silence with my solitude. I wasn't used to the feeling of wanting to engage in conversation with someone who wasn't Nathanial, but the truth was, I found myself wanting to talk to Blair just then. A niggling thought in the back of my mind was urging me to open the lines of communication long closed between us.

The problem was that I was fairly certain that the impression Blair Waldorf had of me was not one that I would find flattering and the odds of her returning my newfound sense of intrigue were extremely slim.

The grape-vine had never been particularly fond of me and I suspected Blair Waldorf was privy to all of their tireless musings. Still, I thought it might be worth the effort to alleviate Blair of some of the more negative notions she might have about me.

I wasn't entirely sure why the thought that Blair disapproved of me—that she found me as coarse and rudimentary as I knew many of the other social butterflies did—should bother me now when I had given it barely a second thought in the past, but, just then, I found myself wanting Blair to think of me as someone interesting and worth knowing too. I wanted her to see something in me worth saving like she did with Serena. What I wanted was for her to look at me and think "that Chuck Bass—he's not so bad."

I wanted to _be_ 'not so bad.'

I peered a little nervously at Blair, watching the sun dancing halos atop her dark head, and thought of Nathanial and what he might say in a time like this. I thought of the way my friend always seemed certain that denying a problem was the first step in getting rid of it. It seemed like a safe place to start. "I'm sure she's fine." I broke the silence between us awkwardly. "Serena, I mean."

"She not," Blair countered briskly, and I looked sideways at her in surprise. I had somehow expected her to share Nate's partiality for sticking his head in the sand.

I nodded, closing the channel on Nathanial and his 'Mr. Brightside' personality. "You're right. I've never seen her like this." I affirmed, "She's always been a bit of a wild-child, of course—probably one of the more avid fans of my Lost Weekends_,_ come to think of it—but there's something different about her partying now." Images of Serena teetering recklessly close to the ledge on the Palace rooftop, Serena dancing on tabletops, mascara smudged part-way down her cheeks, Serena snorting blow flitted across my memory as I continued, "Before, I used to think that she was just looking for a way to stick it to her mom, you know? –give her a reason to disapprove of her, but it's turned into more than that, hasn't it?" I stated more than asked.

Blair gave me a long look. I shifted a little uncomfortably under her gaze, and my hands found the pockets of my shorts. When she didn't immediately speak, I did. "So, care to fill the outer circle in on what kind of teenage angst has Malibu Barbie one step shy of publically slitting her wrists?"

"It's none of the outer circle's business," She looked away, blinking away the glare of the sun. I deflated a little in the face of her hostility.

"Look, I just want to help," I defended, my voice carrying an embarrassingly earnest note.

"Well, you can't. Besides, there's nothing to tell." She said evasively.

I scoffed, "Oh, please, our little Golden Girl's been allergic to sobriety ever since the Sheppard wedding. Don't pretend you haven't noticed. And why _can't_ I help, exactly?" I was a little miffed considering the sheer number of resources I had at my disposal. _She should be begging me for my help_, I thought arrogantly.

A shadow passed over Blair's eyes, but it was gone before I could catch it and put it under a mental microscope. She gave me a sharp look, ignoring my questions. "You seem to be uncharacteristically observant all of sudden, Bass. Have you started keeping tabs on your customers? Making sure they're not in danger of reform?" Her voice was laced with accusation.

I had been right to worry, then; nothing on her end was looking close to intrigue.

I felt the hollowness which had dissipated with my resolve to be 'not so bad' return to the forefront. "Do try and be a little more practical with your guesswork, Waldorf. Why would I go to all of that trouble when I could simply roofie all of their drinks and pump them full of heroin?" I tried to keep my voice unaffected even as I was secretly bristling with offence. I mean, _shit_, I threw extravagant parties, not operated a crack house.

"What's the difference? Providing accessibility is practically as good as putting it in them yourself," She retorted, undeterred in her resolve to cast me as the bad guy.

"Well, If I had known that I would be shouldering all of this blame and guilt so early in my life," I infused my voice with all of the sarcasm I could muster. "I'd have invested a little more energy into finding a proper therapist…or, better yet, a priest." She didn't appear any more amused than I was feeling, but I couldn't let the issue drop just yet, "I guess I'll just have to be sure to let everyone attending this weekend's festivities know that, on top of the booze and the vast assortment of narcotics laid out for their leisure, all of their _sins_ are also on me. I'm sure it'll come as a relief to some of them to know that you've granted them this divine _carte blanche_." A muscle twitched along my jaw.

I may have developed an unexpected desire to call a truce with her, but I wasn't about to let Blair Waldorf think that she could lay all of the world's failings at my door and be done with it.

"I don't care what you do, Bass," She retorted flippantly, "I just can't help but notice that people don't generally leave your parties the same way they came in." She said this part quietly, almost as if admitting her own ignorance on the goings-on of my private underworld. After all, she'd never attended a single one of my sordid weekend events.

"I can see it's no longer enough for you to credit me with Nathanial's bad habits, now you're looking for me to pick up Serena's dirty laundry as well." I stated bitterly, though it came out half question.

Quite absurdly, I felt like something important—any chance I had of a truce with her, perhaps? Maybe my self-worth?—was riding on her answer; I wondered if somewhere inside of her, she realized the influence that she held in that moment.

Blair looked back at me, her face unreadable but probing. She seemed so suddenly innocent in her white dress and with those soft curls framing her face that I felt my indignation melting into a kind of bleak acceptance.

I had worked hard to establish this devil-may-care persona of mine. It hardly seemed fair now to hold it against her for buying into it.

Still, I was disappointed. The Blair I had seen on the beach with Serena had seemed so different from everyone else in my life…so refreshing. I didn't want to let that impression of her go just yet.

Blair looked away with a look that hinted lightly of regret. "No. I—look, I'm sorry." I almost laughed at the way she had choked on the apology, but couldn't help feeling a little appeased that she had even offered one. "I just can't make sense of this. I don't know what to do." She took a ragged breath, "I don't know how to help her."

"Why does it have to be you?" I asked her, genuinely interested in her answer, "Why must you be the one to come to her rescue?"

She looked at me, her eyes large and contemplative. "Because I doubt anyone else will. Besides, she's my best friend." She added as if that was a better reason than her first.

I rolled my eyes, "Serena's a big girl, Blair. You do realize you don't have to carry her all the time, don't you?" She looked as if the concept was entirely foreign to her, so I elaborated, "People can be responsible for their _own_ choices too, you know. Not everything they do is a misguided attempt at filling their emotional voids or because fate has cruelly interceded just to fuck them over. You ought to consider letting them own up to their faults every now and again," Blair was staring at me intensely as if digesting what I was telling her. I softened my tone, "Now, on the off chance your selective hearing has cleared itself up, I believe I've already offered you my help."

A gust of wind picked up from around the woods and blew a few particles of sand into my eyes. I rubbed at them, thinking that my recent venture to get into her good graces was proving rather exhausting. When I opened my eyes again, Blair was watching me.

"What's the deal, Bass?" She asked me seriously.

"I don't know what you mean." I shifted uncomfortably. Blair rolled her eyes like she thought I knew exactly what she meant.

"You. This. Being here for Serena —since when are you the good Samaritan?" She looked at me with part suspicion, part—_intrigue?_

"Good Samaritan?" I feigned confusion, keeping my tone light. "Princess, I don't know where _you_ are going, but_ I'm_ headed to the orgy in the woods."

She rolled her eyes at that but there was a sparkle to them when she returned her gaze to mine that hadn't been there before. "How very Chuck Bass of you." She mused.

"How very Blair Waldorf of you to notice," I returned wryly, tipping my head at her.

She laughed a little this time and I thought the sound reminded me of the tinkling of bells, delicate and musical. "I guess you saw Katie, Penelope, and George Seavers wandering into the woods earlier too then? I'm not in the habit of crediting you with much, I admit, Bass," she said teasingly, "but somehow I thought you'd have better taste."

I lifted my upper lip disdainfully at the mention of the darker-haired minion. Penelope was a particularly vulgar little slut and there was some bad blood between us, "Penelope will be there?" My voice dripped with disgust, "Well, I guess I'll be joining your little manhunt after all. Penny's my number one deal-breaker for…mmm, everything."

"Oh?" Blair considered me thoughtfully for a moment and I prayed I had finally said something redeeming, "Would that be because of that _thing_ you've got going on with Jenny Humphrey?"

I scoffed, suddenly embarrassed by the association. "I don't have _things_ with freshmen, Waldorf." I denied. Not unless occasional sex was considered a thing now a days. I did have that with her. Sex, I mean, not a thing.

"That's not what it says on the bathroom stalls in the girls' lavatory." She returned with a tilt of her head.

I was so surprised that Blair Waldorf, queen of the intellectually superior and poster-girl for class, would deign to read gossip off of a dirty, filth-infested metal door that I forgot to even consider the implications of this revelation.

She seemed to pick up on my thoughts. "It's hard to miss," she ducked her chin, "You have an entire stall devoted to you."

Great, I groaned internally. I had the grape-vine and a toilet stall devoted to making all of my personal shames available for public consumption. The vultures always seemed to have a field-day at my expense and I was getting pretty sick of it.

"You put stock into what some girl scribbles on a door in magic marker while she's taking a piss?" I made every word the subject of ridicule so that the very notion of finding truth in bathroom graffiti seemed outlandish.

"Shouldn't I?" She asked, unfazed by my crudity as well as my tone.

"No." I told her simply. It was the truth. Things like that, people like Gossip Girl tended more towards wishful thinking and guess-work than they did towards actually chronicling facts.

She waited for me to elaborate. I didn't. I mean, I wasn't about to spell it all out for her. There were some truths about me that Blair was going to have to figure out on her own.

We lapsed into another moment of silence as we stepped onto the path Nathanial had a good few minutes head start on.

"I appreciate it—your helping with Serena," She said carefully and I wondered if she was deliberately trying to draw me out, to match up my answers with the ones she'd already formulated in her head.

It was a game of sorts, I supposed, this whole business of trying to figure out Chuck Bass, and she wasn't the first one to play it. Hell, I'd been at it for years now.

I shrugged nonchalantly, not used to Blair's gratitude and even less so to her scrutiny. "Well, you know…I had nothing better to do."

She gave me a sincere smile and I thought her eyes did dazzling, pretty things when she smiled like that. Had I noticed her eyes before? They seemed like such a prominent feature on her face all of a sudden that I found it hard to believe I might have missed them all this time.

"That's right. I guess you're not exactly missing much back there, huh?" She asked.

"No, probably not."

"Why don't you ever go into the water?" Blair asked me pointedly and I was taken a bit aback at the question. Not even Nathanial had asked me that question point-blank and I was more than a little surprised that Blair—haughty and cold as she had always acted towards me—might have cared enough to notice something like that. I could only think of one or two other times that we had attended the same pool or beach party and, as usual, she had hardly seemed to pay me any attention.

"What?" I sputtered, "I go into the water—what are you—of course I—"

"No, you don't," She returned evenly, doing that thing she did with her voice as if she had half of the answers already and was just going through the motions of asking the question.

I tensed immediately, defenses going up and my mood winding down again. _Why the insistence?_ _Did she mean to make a case-study of me? _I wondered bitterly_. Would there be one less empty corner on my bathroom stall-of-indignities when we got back to school?_

My back went rigid and I looked away from her. My voice was terse when I told her, "Don't get all analytic on me, Waldorf. It's purely a case of vanity. Hair this perfect doesn't come without responsibility."

She narrowed her eyes, "Then it isn't some kind of phobia?"

"No."

"Did you ever—"

"No." I cut her off, closing the subject. The trees had become denser the deeper we walked into the woods and we were encompassed by shade now. It got to be rather gloomy.

"Is that your ready answer for every topic of conversation you don't like? Just a curt 'no,' end of story?"

"Yes." I said just to be contradictory.

She huffed. "Well, has anyone ever told you it's rather obnoxious?"

"Has anyone ever told you to mind your own business?" I shot back in annoyance. This conversation was quickly going in every direction I didn't want it to…and just when I had thought that things might have been going my way too.

"Well, fine." Blair pressed her lips together firmly and quickened her pace. I took it as a sign that she considered the conversation over.

"Fine." I glared at her back.

Defeat had my shoulders slumping. To myself I thought that it looked a lot like my father hadn't been too far off the mark all of this time. I really couldn't help but fuck things up.

We walked some distance through the woods in pained silence. I was caught between rehashing all of the resentment I had built up for the Blair over the years and setting aside my pride to tell her that I hadn't meant to be rude when the sound of high-pitched girlish laughter drifted towards us. The sound seemed thrown and bounced off of every tree in its path so that it seemed to reach us from several directions all at once.

Blair broke into a blind run, weaving between trees and jumping over fallen logs, calling out as loudly as she could, "Serena? Serena! Can you hear me?"

Silence was all that greeted us. I called out Serena's name a few more times just to be certain, but the woods seemed to have gone back to sleep.

"Come on, it sounded like it came from over there," I motioned Blair to the right, all of my previous aggression gone. She hesitated, looking to the left.

We both understood that there wouldn't be enough time to follow the wrong lead and still hope to find Serena before dark.

"Just trust me, Blair," I entreated, giving her a gentle and coaxing look and holding out my hand to her in a show of truce—in a bid to win her over.

She laughed mirthlessly, eyeing my outstretched hand with wariness, "I think I might actually trust you even less now than I did when you were just '_Chuck Bass_, slimebag of the century._'_"

I rolled my eyes, "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know. It's just—you used to be more predictable, I suppose. I don't know this person," she motioned at me with her hand, "_this_ you. It hardly seems wise to trust a stranger in the woods."

"Well, thank you, Blair, for taking the time to spell out your complete lack of faith in my character at every opportunity," I snapped, "but, the truth is that you don't know me at all. You _never_ have. And yet, I don't believe I was asking you to hang around so we could peel back the complex layers of my dashing personality. I thought you wanted to find your _friend_ before she met with an untimely end?"

"I do." She lifted her chin. "I will. I'm telling you she went _that_ way." With all of the snobbery I'd expect from Blair, she turned on her heel and marched towards the left.

"Waldorf—" I called after her. "You're going the wrong way!"

"You don't know that, Bass." She threw over her shoulder "What are you some kind of outdoorsman now? A tracker? Why don't you just stick to what you're good at, huh?"

"What I'm good at would require a bed and thirty minutes of your time, sweetheart." I called after her, then pretended to survey the fallen leaves around me, "On second thought, I'll just need the thirty minutes."

"I'm talking about the other things you're good at, Bass," She called over her shoulder, "like, I don't know, failing your courses and being a smarmy—Oh my God, Chuck!" Blair let out a yelp, swinging her arms out as she fought to regain her balance. Beneath her feet, mud and leaves were giving way as the slickened incline of a hill had suddenly turned itself into a slip-and-slide. I moved to grab for one of her flailing arms, but before the tips of my fingers had even brushed hers, one of her knees had collapsed under the slick movement of her feet and she was suddenly sliding down the wet earth on her stomach.

"Blair!" I didn't hesitate to follow her ungraceful decent, though I was more successful in keeping my balance having witnessed the condition of the pathway down and searching out the ledges of rocks and protruding roots.

"Shit, are you alright?" I huffed when I'd joined her at the bottom of the hill.

Blair looked down at where her designer, white dress now looked as if someone had painted a thick smear of mud along the front of it. As if that wasn't bad enough, she had landed, elbow deep, in a puddle of the thick, brown mush and even the tips of her hair were slickened with the sludge. "Oh, gross." She muttered, scrambling to get up and only succeeding in slipping around in the mud a little bit more. "Ugh. Eww. So eww."

Without a second thought, I reached down and fastened my arms around Blair's waist, securing the crook of her arms around my biceps and pulled her weight towards me. Struggling to find her footing on the wet earth, Blair wrapped her dripping, mud-caked arms around my shoulders. In the blind effort to find solid ground with the heel of her beach sandals, she managed to catch one of my legs instead, pushing it out from under me. I landed on top of Blair with a stunned exhale of breath.

For several seconds, neither of us so much as blinked. Slowly, I looked down at the girl tangled up between my limbs with my mind entirely blank, my brain still trying to catch up with my body in trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, or, better yet, what the hell I was supposed to do now.

Slowly, awareness came seeping in with my senses—the feel of my stomach pressed against the flat of hers through our wet clothing, the way her hair felt against the back of my hands, the way she fit perfectly into the planes and concaves of my body…the way she was looking up at me as if only seeing me for the first time—and, with it all, an increasing feeling of panic set in.

What in damnation was I doing?

Suddenly terrified that my so-called intrigue with my best friend's girlfriend was taking a turn towards something more assuredly dangerous, I rolled my weight onto my side and untangled my arms and legs from Blair's. With a huff of annoyance to mask my jumbled thoughts, I drawled, "Should I say it now, or do you want a few minutes to catch your breath?"

Blair looked nervously at me sideways, "Say what?"

"That I fucking _told_ you so!"

"Oh, very mature, Bass," She pushed herself up into a sitting position with a glare in my direction, "If that's how you want to play it, then let's not gloss over that hugely uninspiring rescue mission you just attempted."

I blushed. "Hey, things were going great until you decided to go all Raggedy-Anne with the limbs there," I retorted, ending with a laugh as I quietly conceded that my turn at playing the hero had been embarrassingly clumsy. I stood up and reached a hand down to her courteously, making a show of making up for my previous failings.

She let out another one of her light, tinkling laughs as she took my hand. Her tiny fingers wrapped around mine and I couldn't help but notice how small and girlish her hand looked against mine, the way it just fit perfectly…

"Look at me, I'm completely covered in mud." She quirked a brow at me and, in a move completely uncharacteristic for the girl who had always taken every opportunity to vocalize her distaste for my habitual jeering, teased, "This must be fulfilling at least a few of your fantasies."

I grinned unabashedly, "All of them, actually. It's always you, me, and gallons of mud." As an afterthought, I added, "Sometimes, you bring along a twin."

"Yeah, right." She laughed again, seeming more relaxed than I'd ever seen her in my company. It was like the crack in Blair's armor that I'd been merely peering into on the beach had suddenly split open and I was finally looking at the real deal, the Blair without the defenses and inhibitions that she usually hid behind. It was something to behold.

I wondered if this was the side of her that she had reserved strictly for Nate and Serena. I wondered if maybe this meant that I had actually been inducted into the inner circle, her circle. There was a sense of satisfaction in thinking that maybe I had succeeded in what I had set out to accomplish when I'd fallen into step beside Blair. I felt some of the weight of the day and of the run-in with my father lift from my chest.

"Well, If you ask me, this looks a lot sexier on T.V.—ouch!" Blair broke off and sucked in a breath as she put her weight on her feet. Instinctively, I placed supportive hands under each of her arms and she leaned into me gratefully. All traces of her laughter leaving her face, Blair pursed her lips and grit out, "My ankle. I must have twisted it."

I considered her sandle-clad feet for a minute, one ankle raised to alleviate any pressure, before concluding, "I'll just have to carry you." The words were out of my mouth before I'd even stopped to process them.

Blair's surprise mirrored my own, "What?"

I straightened a little, determination now taking the place of spontaneity, "I said, I'll carry you."

She gave me a wide-eyed stare before breathing with something akin to wonder, "Who _are_ you?"

"I'm George fucking Clooney." I snapped, "What kind of a question is that?" Had she knocked her head on something?

"I'm not asking you your name," she said impatiently, "I just—I just want to know why you're different today. I mean, why you _seem_ different. I mean, _are_ you different?" She shook her head as if to clear it, "Christ—I guess—well, I guess the better question would have been 'who are you and what have you done with _Chuck Bass_?'"

"Ha. You seemed to have all of the answers earlier, Blair. Why don't you just _tell_ me who I am again and save me the effort?" When she didn't immediately answer, I turned to study her face. Had I offended her? Had she retreated back into her shell? She looked back at me contemplatively, but made no more effort to continue the conversation. I returned the favour.

Ducking down and placing a hand on Blair's waist in permission, I waited for her to position her weight around my torso before swiping an arm underneath her knees. I lifted her into my arms and made for the path that I had pointed out to Blair earlier.

It felt good to be carrying her; like maybe I had captured a piece of the Blair who had cradled Serena against her as she'd lead her away from the edge of whatever emotional ledge she had been standing on. It felt peaceful, right.

When Blair spoke again, I almost didn't hear her, "I think you're a little bit off—from the Chuck Bass I know, I mean—you seem so much less selfish, less closed-off, less antagonistic than I remember, but I'm starting to think that maybe your heart has always been in the right place and I've just been too self-absorbed to see it." I blinked at her a few times before raising my head and looking straight ahead, saying nothing.

She was wrong; my heart was definitely not in the right place. It was all wrong today, actually.

I carried Blair through the darkening woods, guided by the distant sound of Serena's laughter and Nathanial's voice and weighed down by a feeling of deep reluctance. I felt like something special had been borne in the woods that day, something fresh and invigorating that was still too feeble and fragile to be taken back into the real world. I sensed that the world outside of the woods would be less tolerant of forays into the wilderness with Blair Waldorf nestled intimately in my arms.

Alas, in no time it would be time to go back—back home, back to reality, back to the darkness. I didn't want to move another step.

Blair stayed equally quiet in my arms, still and solemn with her arms wrapped tightly around my neck and her cheek pressed against my heart, listening to the thud, thud, thudding of it as if she could decipher its rhythmic song; as if it was speaking only for her.

I suddenly had a half a mind to ask her if she wasn't feeling nearly as suffocated at the thought of going back as I was, if she didn't want to just stay around for a little while longer, rolling in the mud and swapping impromptu fantasies…but my feet pressed forward and my lips pressed hard together.

Soon—too, too soon—we had reached the edge of the clearing where Nate was still trying to help a struggling Serena onto her feet.

The sun was breaking through the canopy of leaves up above in beams of light as if a thousand of heaven's little spotlights were directed solely on the pair of beautiful blondes with their winsome giggles and Olympian looks…as if to command Blair and I _"Look at them!"_…as if that's what they had been made for and what we had been made to do.

"Serena, stop! Come on, stop moving!" Nate was grabbing at Serena's arms and she was playfully evading him, laughing with the abandon of a child and grabbing at her sides.

"You're tickling!" She accused happily and Nate smiled down into her face.

"I'm not, S. Look, I'm only touching your arm, okay?" But it was no use, Serena was full of laughter and completely depleted of logic.

They looked so contained, so surreal in their make-shift spotlight, that I wondered with some bitterness if it wasn't some kind of sacrilege to step out from the shadows now, to interrupt this ethereal moment.

"You know," Blair spoke up, her voice soft and quiet—meant for my ears only. I looked down at her face, tracing the outline of her nose, mouth, cheeks with my eyes, "Sometimes I think that if you were to put her under a microscope you might actually find that she's composed of nothing more than bubbles of laughter and bursts of sunshine and tiny drops of alcohol." She smiled and the light illuminated her features. I couldn't help but notice that the sun did pretty things to Blair Waldorf's face when she smiled.

Without looking up, content to be watching her, I asked, "What about you? What makes Blair Waldorf up?"

She laughed as though it was a silly question, as if she'd never thought about it because who would be curious what molecules made up someone like Blair when there was Serena to marvel at by her side. I could see her really considering the question.

"Secret dreams…whispered doubts and…and bits of old-time romance."

"And diamonds." I added for her without hesitation, filing the rest of her cryptic confessions away for future review.  
.

"Diamonds?" She asked, curious.

I nodded easily. "They're in your eyes." She lit up and I found myself smiling down at her pleased expression.

"Your turn."

"For what?" I asked, not following.

"What makes _you_ up, Bass."

I didn't think she'd really want to know, or maybe it was that I didn't want her to really know, but my eyebrows drew together as I fumbled for something to tell her. I was pretty sure if someone were to look deep inside of me they would find nothing…nothing but a deep, resounding darkness. "Scotch." I told her easily.

She smiled because my reputation for the drink had also preceded me. "No." She said quietly, watching me now like I was watching her, "I don't believe you."

I scoffed, "You should. That's all there is."

"No, there's more to you than that." She said simply, confidently. I studied the chocolate of her eyes, the depth in her gaze, the softness of the curve of her lips. For the first time in a very long time I thought to myself, _could there be more?_ Was there more to me than an angry, troubled teenager with a penchant for self-destruction and little qualm about indulging my vices?

Maybe…maybe there was.

It was Nate who discovered us standing still upon our hill, in the shade, trying to figure out what it was that made the other one up. He called out to me. "Chuck! Hey!"

Blair and I both turned to face him. He caught Blair's eyes with a smile and it seemed to finally dawn on him that there was something not quite right with the picture we presented. "Blair?" he asked with concern, "What happened? Are you, okay?"

I wanted to tell him that Blair was fine; it was me who probably was no longer 'okay.' The words didn't make it to my lips.

"I fell down, twisted my ankle. It's nothing, Nate, don't worry." Blair told him, moving marginally away from my body.

Nate quickly approached us, concern clear in his face and took a look at Blair's swollen ankle. He pushed the hair from her face and I felt a stab of some unrecognized emotion at the easy way he touched her.

"Really, Nate. I'm fine," Blair breathed, her voice small.

Nate looked up at me then and met my eyes. There was trust and gratitude in his blue gaze. I wanted to look away. "Thanks, Chuck." He said simply and I nodded. With a smile for Blair he reached for her, telling me, "I'll take it from here."

I transferred Blair to Nate's waiting arms with a feeling of uncertainty. He looked up at me and tipped his head towards where Serena was lying on the dirty ground, making dirt angels in the dying leaves, "Do you mind?" He asked and I shook my head thinking, _yes, but what's my choice?_

I watched Nate carry Blair into the clearing, into the light, with a feeling of utter emptiness. My arms fell to my sides like they were foreign and useless—like they hadn't actually been arms until they had cradled Blair's weight within them and so now didn't know what to make of themselves in her absence.

I gathered Serena from the forest floor with an impatience that was perhaps prejudiced and undeserved and followed Nate, half carrying, half-dragging the drunken girl through the trees. I felt so angry with Serena all of a sudden— for drinking, for running away, for not being small and delicate like Blair was, for reminding me too much of me…but most of all, for being left behind the same way I had been. Part of me knew that it wasn't really Serena's fault. It had nothing to do with her ultimately, but in that moment, none of that mattered to me. I had already found what I was looking for: somewhere to lay the blame.


End file.
